With the advent and explosion of the Internet and the World Wide Web, there has come a similar explosion in the demand for data storage solutions. To address this demand, large data centers typically employ rack mount cabinets filled with hard disk drives. One typical implementation for providing network access to a large number of hard disk drives is shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, a typical architecture for providing network-attached storage involves two components. The first component is a rack mount enclosure 2. The enclosure 2 houses a server computer 28 that receives and responds to requests for data stored on the hard disks 18A-18D, stored in the rack mount enclosure 4.
According to a typical implementation, the computer 28 comprises a motherboard 22 containing conventional computing components such as a disk adapter 24 for controlling the hard disk drives 18A-18D, and a local area network (“LAN”) adaptor 26 for establishing communications with the network 26. The computer 28 may additionally include a local hard disk drive 18E.
The LAN adaptor 25 communicates with storage clients 30A-30C through the network 26. The network 26 may include a hub 27, a router, or other conventional networking components. Through the network 26, the storage clients 30A-30C can request access to data stored on the hard disk drives 18A-18D from the computer 28. The computer 28 can respond to the request from the storage clients 30A-30C by retrieving data from the hard disk drives 18A-18D and providing the data to the requesting storage client through the network 26.
In a typical implementation, the hard disk drives 18A-18D are stored in a 3-unit rack mount enclosure 4. The enclosure 4 includes space for one or more enclosures 12 which may include one or more mass storage devices 6A-6E, a fan 8 or a power supply 10. The computer 28 is typically connected to the enclosure 4 through the use of a connector cable 20. In the typical implementation shown in FIG. 1, a total of four units of rack space are required.
While the conventional architecture for a network attached storage server shown in FIG. 1 does provide the ability for the storage clients 30A-30C to access the hard disk drives 18A-18D, this architecture is not without drawbacks. In particular, in order to provide access to hard disk drives 18A-18D, an enclosure 2 is needed for the computer 28. As mentioned above, the enclosure 2 occupies at least one unit of rack space.
Because the number of rack spaces within a rack mount cabinet is limited, it is highly desirable to reduce the number of rack spaces utilized to store the server computers 28. Therefore, it would be advantageous if an architecture could be provided for accessing mass storage devices that does not require a dedicated rack space for a server computer. Moreover, although the architecture shown in FIG. 1 provides a conventional interface from the network 26 to the hard disk drives 18A-18D, the illustrated architecture is not easily configured to provide a bridge between other types of interfaces and the hard disk drives 18A-18D. Therefore, there is a need for an apparatus that can easily provide a bridge between an external communications interface and the hard disk drives 18A-18D, regardless of the data communications interface utilized to connect the hard disk drives 18A-18D.